Christopher Whalen

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The decision by Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the U.S. credit rating illustrates a number of areas of weakness in the world of ratings. While S&P, Moody’s and the other mainstream ratings agencies have done a pretty good job on corporate and municipal debt ratings over the past century and more, when it comes to sovereigns and other highly politicized situations, their records are rather poor, if you’ll forgive the pun.